More media misrepresentation on Iraq: WMD and Kay's report

Again, the media is painting a picture that is just flat not true. They have been claiming that Kay has found nothing in Iraq, and that is not merely a misrepresentation, it is a lie. A couple of articles:

Don't bother me with the facts

To hear a number of leading Democrats tell it, the report issued last week by David Kay, the chairman of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), was proof positive that President Bush had effectively committed a war crime: He launched a war of aggression on the pretext that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and now, thanks to Dr. Kay, we know that wasn't true.

There is only one problem with this highly partisan attack, and the parallel media reporting that has taken a similarly pollyannish line about the Kay report: No responsible reader could take any comfort from its findings, let alone construe them as an indictment of the Bush Administration and its decision to liberate Iraq.

'Just The Facts, Ma'am'

While the President's critics may not wish to be bothered by the facts, they are, as the saying goes, "stubborn things." And those laid out by Dr. Kay and his colleagues paint a picture of Saddam Hussein as despot relentlessly engaged in the pursuit of the most devastating weapons known to man. The Iraq Survey Group's inability to date to locate the weapons the UN previously determined were in Saddam's hands should be a matter of grave concern – and redoubled effort. Its report certainly is not cause for, as some have suggested, shutting down the ISG and reallocating its resources elsewhere.

Consider, for example, the following facts that belie the conclusion Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction:


- The Kay team has thus far been able to examine only 10 of the 130 known ammo depots in Iraq, some of which are as large as fifty square miles. It would be folly to say on the basis of a less-than-ten-percent sample whether WMD are to be found in the remainder.

- These depots are filled with immense quantities of ordinance. Since the regime made no appreciable effort to distinguish which contained high explosives and which were loaded with chemical or biological agents, establishing exactly what is in such facilities is a time-consuming and dangerous task.

- In addition to the known depots, there are untold numbers of covert weapons caches around the country. These caches have been the source of much of the ordinance used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to attack American and coalition forces. Whether any of these contain WMD remains unknown at this juncture. But if they do, IEDs could, in the future, be vastly more devastating – especially to unprotected Iraqis in proximity to the attack.

- The task is further complicated by the relatively small size of the objects of the search. Dr. Kay has noted that all of Saddam Hussein's as yet unaccounted for WMD could be stored in a space the size of a two-car garage. According to former Clinton CIA Director R. James Woolsey, his entire suspected inventory of the biological agent anthrax would fill roughly half a standard semi's tractor trailer.

'More UN Inspections Would Have Done the Trick'? Fuggedaboutit

Taken together with the assiduous efforts Saddam made to conceal and otherwise to obscure his weapons of mass destruction program (also documented by Dr. Kay and his team), these factors give rise to an ineluctable reality: If the ISG is having a hard time ferreting out the truth about Iraq's WMD, UN inspectors would likely never have found dispositive evidence of Iraqi WMD given the additional constraints they labored under that no longer apply (notably, those imposed on freedom of travel and inquiry by Saddam's totalitarian system and the attendant lack of cooperation from Iraqi scientists).

The Intelligence Connection

The really bad news in the Kay report are its revelations about the role being played in WMD-related activities by Saddam's dreaded Iraqi Intelligence Service (known as the IIS, or Mukhabarat). According to Dr. Kay, the Mukhabarat had over two-dozen secret laboratories – and more are still being found – that "at a minimum kept alive Iraq's capability to produce both biological and chemical weapons."

In addition to discovering work aimed at weaponizing various deadly diseases, the Iraq Survey Group received from an Iraqi scientist "reference strains" for one of the most lethal substances known to man: Botulinum toxin. In short order, with the right equipment and growth material – items Saddam was able to acquire and retain since they were inherently "dual use" and could also be used for commercial purposes -- such strains could translate into large quantities of biological agents.

Lest we forget, it was this sort of capability that President Bush cited as grounds for war. He warned of the possibility that weapons of mass destruction could be made available to terrorists. It would not take large quantities to inflict immense damage. And it would likely be the Iraqi Intelligence Services, rather than the regular army or even the Republican Guard, who would be responsible for providing such support to the regime's terrorist proxies. In a little-noted aspect of his recent "Meet the Press" interview, Vice President Richard Cheney for the first time offered official confirmation that Iraqi agents appeared to have played such a catalytic role in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

The Bottom Line

It is one thing to ignore the facts available, and their ominous implications. It is, however, another thing altogether to pretend that David Kay has shown that there is no danger from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, when the facts are otherwise, and bothersome indeed.

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=papers&code=03-D_38

This next one is a must read. It is Kay's actual testimony to Congress - what was really said, from the CIA's site. It is too long to post here, but I *highly* recommend that everyone read it, as it is straight from the horse's mouth, and it paints a very different picture from what our friends at the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN want you to think. In short, this is the actual truth.

STATEMENT BY DAVID KAY ON THE INTERIM PROGRESS REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE IRAQ SURVEY GROUP (ISG) BEFORE THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEFENSE, AND THESENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, October 2, 2003

http://www.odci.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html

read the above link if you're just skimming through

(cont'd)

 

Monday, October 06, 2003

The following is a transcribed excerpt from FOX News Sunday, Oct. 5, 2003.

TONY SNOW, FOX NEWS: Joining us to determine what the Kay report does and does not say is David Kay, the CIA special adviser on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs and head of the Iraqi Survey Group.

Mr. Kay, welcome.

DAVID KAY, CHIEF IRAQ WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Happy to be with you, Tony.

SNOW: Let's take a quick look at some of the headlines from this week characterizing your report. I want to get your reaction to them.

Here we see The New York Times: "No Illicit Arms." The Washington Post: "No Banned Weapons." The Los Angeles Times: "No Illicit Iraqi Arms." USA Today: "No Illegal Weapons."

Is that what you found?

KAY: Well, we certainly found that — have not yet found illicit arms. But that's not the only thing the report says. In fact, I'm sort of amazed at what was powerful information about both their intent and their actual activities that were not known and were hidden from U.N. inspectors seems not to have made it to the press. This is information that, had it been available last year, would have been headline news.

SNOW: One of the things that you found, for instance, is the Mukhabarat, the secret service, in fact had a vigorous weapons program of its own. Tell us about it.

KAY: Well, we have found right now — and we're still finding them — over two dozen laboratories that were hidden in the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, were not declared to the U.N., had prohibited equipment, and carried on activities that should have been declared.

Now, at the minimum, they kept alive Iraq's capability to produce both biological and chemical weapons. We found assassination tools. So we know that, in fact, they had a prohibited intent to them.

SNOW: You also talk about reference strains of biological agents. What does that mean?

KAY: Well, that's one of the most fascinating stories. An Iraqi scientist in 1993 hid in his own refrigerator reference strains for — active strains, actually would've — were still active when we found them — Botulinum toxin, one of the most toxic elements known.

He was also asked to hide others, including anthrax. After a couple of days, he turned them back because he said they were too dangerous; he had small children in the house.

This is typical. We now have three cases in which scientists have come forward with equipment, technology, diagrams, documents and, in this case, actual weapons material, reference strains and Botulinum toxin, that they were told to hide and that the U.N. didn't find.

SNOW: You believe that there are similar strains perhaps throughout Iraq right now?

KAY: We're actively searching for at least one more cache of weapons — of strains that we know exists.

SNOW: This is a cache that had been referred to by a scientist. The first bit of information paid off; you're still looking for the second one?

KAY: Exactly.

SNOW: And the second one is a large cache.

KAY: It's much larger. It contains anthrax, and that's one reason we're actively interested in getting it.

SNOW: Now, you also talk about new research on biological capable agents, such as Brucella, Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, Ricin and Naflotoxin (ph).

KAY: That's exactly right, and that's the things I'm surprised no one has paid attention to.

The new strains they're working on, including Congo-Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, are something that should have been reported to the U.N. In fact, all of the work should have been reported. It was not reported.

This is activities, prohibited activities they've carried on. And this continued right up to 2003 in these four cases, unreported, undiscovered.

SNOW: Unreported and undiscovered.

When you're analyzing how much information was kept from the U.N., how would you characterize it?

KAY: Dozens of cases right now that are significant. The most significant, of course, is in the missile area, where we're talking about activity on four different fronts that would have provided missiles capable of exceeding the U.N. limit of 150 kilometers.

SNOW: All right, I want to get to that in a moment. Before we do that, one final note on Botulinum. The State Department is now calling this discovery in fact the discovery of a weapon of mass destruction. Would you accept that characterization?

KAY: It's not a weapon in the sense of it was ready to be fired. It is absolutely the essential element that only time and a little growth media would have produced large amounts of Botulinum toxin.

SNOW: And you also had a number of scientists coming forward and telling you that there were plans afoot that, if they were given the orders to create chemical or biological weapons, there was a certain timetable in which they would be able to produce them.

KAY: That's correct. We've had very senior scientists — and this is actually a good news story. People don't realize how many Iraqis we now have cooperating with us. That's one reason for my optimism that we'll get to the bottom of the program. But it would have taken them from weeks to months to restart mustard production, and for months to — the maximum estimate is two years on VX production.

SNOW: Now, a lot of these scientists — you talk about one scientist being assassinated the same day he talked to your people.

KAY: Yes.

SNOW: Somebody else was shot six times. They're still subject to considerable intimidation?

KAY: They certainly are, and they report that to us every day. And that's why I guess I have great admiration for those who are talking to us. They're talking to us not for rewards; they're talking to us in the face of active threats against them for collaborating with us.

SNOW: Why can't you protect them?

KAY: Well, you know, we could take everyone out of the country, but realize in Iraq you're talking about extended families. We are taking steps to try to protect them, but we're never perfect at that.

SNOW: Let's talk about the volume of arms. How many arms depots are there in Iraq?

KAY: We've identified 130 ammunition storage points of significant size, some larger than 50 square kilometers. These are sites that contain, the best estimate is, between 600,000 and 650,000 tons of arms. That's about one-third of the entire ammunitions stockpile of the much-larger U.S. military.

SNOW: So that's pretty astonishing for a country of that size and population.

KAY: It's very astonishing when you're on the ground looking at it.

SNOW: You've only been through 10 of those so far. Why so few depots have been examined at this point?

KAY: Well, it's a size issue and going out. For example, we spent 10 days on a very large one about three weeks ago, operating in temperatures that range from 130 — that was a low day — to 150. And literally, you have to go — this one was over 200 square miles. It's damning, in terms of the scale, to have to do that.

SNOW: So you have still 120 of these to examine?

KAY: And we have 26 on a critical list to examine. That's really the number that drives us right now.

SNOW: What do you want to find in those?

KAY: Well, the Iraqis have told us, and we learned in 1991, that they have the habit of storing their chemical munitions right in a mix with these standard conventional armaments. And they also tended not to mark them. So you really have to examine each one, and that's why we're going there looking at them.

SNOW: There were claims before the war by Secretary of State Colin Powell that Iraq had weaponized and ready-to-use chemical weapons. He was very confident about the existence of chemical weapons. You have not yet found actual chemical weapons, correct?

KAY: Tony, it's important to stress the word "yet." We have not only Secretary Powell, we have Iraqi generals telling us that they had them. Unfortunately, they're not able to tell us where they are now. And that's why we're looking so hard.

SNOW: Biological weapons, you have found some strains; you think you're going to find more based on the testimony you've received?

KAY: Based on information leads, we have no reason to believe that we will not find more. But we're searching still.

SNOW: Let me ask you about the veracity of the people who are coming forward. Are they reliable sources? Have they given you information that's paid off, or are you getting a lot of crank information from people?

KAY: Well, they're not all reliable, and I wouldn't expect them to. We have to deal with them much like the way journalists do. I need to separate out what they really know personally from what someone has told them, and then go find the sub-sources who told them that. It's a very time-consuming process.

SNOW: Senator Carl Levin said the other day that there was no evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program. True or false?

KAY: Well, I think in the nuclear area there's evidence that they were putting small amounts of money and starting rudimentary experiments. But we haven't finished our examination there. On the basis of what we've examined, I think there is evidence that they were interested in restarting their nuclear program, but it was at a very early stage, based on what we have currently found.

SNOW: You also had heard that Saddam Hussein had gotten frustrated with the U.N. weapons inspectors and was simply ready to go ahead, regardless of their presence on his soil.

KAY: His senior head of the arms industry has told us that in 2000 he believed that Saddam had simply gotten fed up with the U.N. restrictions and was ready, in the face of them, to start restarting the program.

Now, the one piece of evidence that confirms that is in the missile area, where exactly that's when it restarted.

SNOW: And you also found propellants.

You mentioned that there are four classes. You had cruise missiles. You had the attempt to buy the Nodong missile from North Korea that can have a range of up to 1,300 kilometers, about 800 miles...

KAY: Right.

SNOW: ... and a series of other things. You had rocket propellants, correct?

KAY: Well, the rocket propellants are really an interesting story I'm surprised no one has picked up on. We have Iraqis now telling us that they continued, until 2001 or early 2002, to be capable of mixing and preparing Scud missile fuel.

Scud missile fuel is only useful in Scud missiles, no other class of missiles that Iraq has. And yet Iraq declared that it got rid of all of its Scud missiles in the early 1990s. Why would you continue to produce Scud missile fuel if you didn't have Scuds? We're looking for the Scuds.

SNOW: In speaking to reporters the other day, you also said that you were examining the possible cross-border transportation of arms into Syria, Jordan and Iran. Now, the Jordanian government has said, absolutely not true. Do you still think it's possible that arms could have made their way into Jordan?

KAY: Well, we're still examining what moved where. We have multiple reports from Iraqis of moving material. We do know that documents were taken to Jordan, because we're engaged in negotiations with someone who is in Jordan to recover those documents. I have no personal knowledge that weapons were moved into Jordan.

SNOW: Does this person in Jordan have any official relationship with the government, or is this a private citizen?

KAY: Oh, absolutely no official relationship with the government. He fled there, and he's there solely on his personal basis.

SNOW: How about Syria? I've heard talk of convoys making their way out of Iraq into Syria in the weeks before the war. What have you heard?

KAY: We've heard the same reports. Actually, we have probably more specific evidence on that, on dates, times...

SNOW: I would suspect you know more than I do on that.

KAY: ... and routes taken. The difficulty we have is proving what was in the convoys, and that's where we're stymied right now.

SNOW: You also have reports of a number of nations engaged in illegal trade or dual-use technology trade with Iraq. Why won't you tell us who those countries are?

KAY: Because we're continuing to investigate to find the exact details and to be sure that we have absolute accuracy. Also, because we suspect that these same companies have been engaged with other proliferant regimes, so we want to get to the bottom of this.

And let me say, it's not just dual-use. The equipment that we're after and the information we have relates to things that were clearly illegal to sell to Iraq. This is illegal procurement. It's not something that could have other uses. They shouldn't have had it.

SNOW: Were any American companies involved?

KAY: Not that we've discovered to date.

SNOW: What about the United Nations? There's some talk that the United Nations ought to handle weapons inspection. What do you make of that?

KAY: Well, I certainly — we've used and are using today former U.N. inspectors. But the idea of turning it back over to the U.N. just doesn't hold any credibility.

The U.N. has pulled essentially all of its staff out of Iraq because of two explosions. I've had teams attacked four times in September and four serious injuries. Every one of the people we have on the ground, including myself, is weapons qualified and routinely carries weapons. We operate in a very non-permissive environment.

That's not what the U.N. does. I can't believe that the U.N. — as a U.N. inspector, I never carried a weapon, and we never operated in this type of environment.

SNOW: You've been looking for weapons. Have you found any documentary evidence of ties to Al Qaida or other terrorist groups?

KAY: We have not — with regard to weapons of mass destruction, and that is really the area I operate in, no, we have not.

SNOW: But how about in other weapons? Has anything else come across? Because one of the things you document is a very thorough program of trying to destroy evidence in the wake of the U.S. and British invasion.

KAY: We have discovered documentary evidence that relates to various terrorist connections, and what happens, Tony, when we do that, is we immediately turn it over. I have an FBI rep who's on the Iraq Survey Group. We turn it over to those people whose professional business is investigating those ties.

SNOW: So when you look at the totality of the investigation, in Iraq and in surrounding countries, what would you put the probability of finding weapons of mass destruction?

KAY: I simply don't know. I have tried to conduct a work program that guarantees us that if they are there, we will find them. Rather than estimate — I don't want to estimate. I want to have proof, and that's what we're driving toward that conclusion.

SNOW: All right, David Kay, thanks for joining us today.

KAY: Thank you, Tony, very much.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99151,00.html

 

If you'd actually read the freaking post you'd have seen that it includes the ******* CIA.

Nice effort trying to avoid the issue. It would seem that that is all you are capable of - avoiding issues.

 

SF:

I'm sorry, I thought you were commenting on what I had posted.

As far as media misrepresentation goes - all media outlets are guilty of that. I am not playing favorites here, not even with FOX news and affiliates. They are all misrepresenting the real story.

That is why I posted Kay's testimony directly. It is not at all in line with reports we are seeing coming from the major media outlets. Like the general situation in Iraq, they are only reporting one aspect of the issue. That is hard to deny after reading Kay's testimony.

GATER:

If you'll read Kay's testimony (the ODCI link) you'll see that he has two comments about that:

1) There is evidence that the cover-up operation was ongoing before and through the war, and even afterwards, meaning that they were moving stuff around and destroying what they could.

2) Those stories that we heard before and during the war about convoys moving stuff out of the country were true, although they cannot be sure what it was that they were moving. The implication is that it is entirely possible that the actual weapons were moved to another country...

Curiously, no one has addressed one main question:

We have found definite evidence that the WMD programs existed. Why would the programs exist if they were not producing weapons?

They would not.

And just to head off No Worries' predictable attack, here is a little of what Mr. Kay has to say about Saddam's nuke program:

According to documents and testimony of Iraqi scientists, some of the key technical groups from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program remained largely intact, performing work on nuclear-relevant dual-use technologies within the Military Industrial Commission (MIC). Some scientists from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program have told ISG that they believed that these working groups were preserved in order to allow a reconstitution of the nuclear weapons program, but none of the scientists could produce official orders or plans to support their belief.

In some cases, these groups performed work which could help preserve the science base and core skills that would be needed for any future fissile material production or nuclear weapons development.

Several scientists - at the direction of senior Iraqi government officials - preserved documents and equipment from their pre-1991 nuclear weapon-related research and did not reveal this to the UN/IAEA. One Iraqi scientist recently stated in an interview with ISG that it was a "common understanding" among the scientists that material was being preserved for reconstitution of nuclear weapons-related work.

So dual-use R&D was going on, they had everything set up to go as soon as the UN was out of the picture, and reports say that Saddam got fed up and may have ordered the program to go ahead anyway as early as 2000. What does that mean? It means that had the UN lifted sanctions as No Worries wanted, then Saddam would have shortly had his bomb.

 

Here is what we *know* at this point:

- We know for a fact now that Saddam did indeed have WMD programs

- We have not yet (as Mr. Kay repeatedly emphasizes) found large caches of weapons

Now, no one has answered the billion-dollar question yet:

Why did Saddam have WMD programs if he was not producing or did not intend to produce WMD?

Obviously, he either did produce WMD or had intent to do so as soon as the UN got out (which wouldn't have been too long; we could not keep up the sanctions and containment policy forever). There is no other reasonable conclusion.

If he did already produce caches of weapons, then it should not be a mystery why we have not found them yet. There are three *extremely likely* possibilities based upon what we know:

1) They were destroyed immediately prewar and/or during the war so as to erase the evidence and make us look like saps

2) They were movede to another country, as prewar reports indicated, and we know know is entirely likely

3) The Iraqis buried them somewhere; this is the one I think most likely. Note that this can be combined with #2 (ie, moved elsewhere and buried) easily for a coherent explanation of their absence.

Also note that as Mr. Kay indicates, it would not be difficult to bury the weapons and hide them for an extended period of time from us; as Kay says, all of Iraq's suspected stocks could fit into something the size of a two-car garage, a volume that would be very, very difficult to uncover in a state the geographical equivalent of California.

If any of these three are true, and Mr. Kay seems to think that at least one of them is, then Bush and our intel services were precisely correct in their prewar assessments, and misled no one at all. The closest one can get to that is the #1 option (destroyed prewar and/or concurrent with war); but even this one fails to pass the test, because Saddam did not tell anyone about it, and we had no way of knowing. Either way, the intel was good and Bush told the truth.

The other alternative, given that we know now that the programs did in fact exist, was that no actual WMD stocks had yet been produced, and that the Iraqis were just biding their time. One still cannot use this to justify the antiwar stance that there was no threat, because in this scenario the intent was clearly to begin production as soon as the coast was clear, which would have presented us with exactly the same threat as the other scenarios. It would merely have been postponed until a later, indeterminate date.

Either way, the threat was real, and no one misled anyone.

Bottom line:

If the WMD were not already present, and logic and available evidence say that they probably were, they would have been at some future date. By removing Saddam we removed a WMD threat that was either present or inevitable, hence the "Bush Lied" crowd has no justification for their arguments.

I have consistently warned that anyone who takes the stance that there were no WMD should be careful, and would probably be better off reserving judgement on that until more information is available. Ignore that warning at your own risk.

 

B-Bob:

This is exactly the problem. You say:

without emphasizing the "presently" part of the statement. The media usually doesn't even include that qualifier at all, as if this is the final report and the case is closed.

The fact is that no one knows whether or not the actual weapons are there, but everyone is acting as if the issue is concluded and the case is solved. The reality couldn't be farther from that.

The only thing we can honestly say at this point is that it seems likely that the weapons either are or were there, but that we have not found them yet. To say anything else is inaccurate and misleading.

 

B-Bob - I just want the truth - whatever that may be - to be told. I am seeing very little of that nowadays, and if the truth is complicated, then so be it. It is worth hearing.

 

rimrocker (taking a peek) -

Your billion dollar questions are worth collectively about two cents, and are nothing more than propagandistic whining about nonissues that, if repeated enough, will become issues - as we are seeing.

Again, you leave out the "yet" qualifier, which makes you guilty of misrepresenting in the same vein as the media. The "yet" is the most important part in this discussion. Do you honestly fail to understand that, or do you just refuse to admit it?

As for your "billion dollar question", let me ask you this:

If the administration truly believed that the WMD were there, then how could it have "leveled" with you about the threat being more distant, when it believed it to be closer than iot already was?

And your other "billion dollar question":

Why do you not understand the signioficance of finding active programs? Let me spell it out for you in simple terms that you can understand: IF THERE WERE WEAPONS PROGRAMS, THEN THERE MUST HAVE BEEN WEAPONS, BECAUSE IF THERE WERE NO WEAPONS THEN THERE WOULD BE NO REASON TO HAVE WEAPONS PROGRAMS.

I think that you get that, you're just not honest enough to admit the significance of it. Which is why I put you on ignore in the first place...

 

I honestly don't know what sort of a timetable should be put on it. On the one hand, I wouldn't want to put any sort of timetable on it, because we might not stumble across them for another 50 years if they are really well hidden. On the other hand, this cannot be left an open question, and at some point we will just have to make a judgment based upon available evidence.

Mr. Kay says he needs another six to nine months. I don't think that's unreasonable, given how slow the process is (note only 10 out of 130 target facilities have even been searched at this point - another reason not to jump to conclusions). We can wait another few months, I think.

The warning was a polite . Although, in a more sinister sense, as long as the WMD are unaccounted for, there is always the possibility that they will fall into some bad hands... Another reason not to abandon the search as some would like.